Many wireless networks (such as wireless local area networks or WLANs), rely on infrastructure components that establish data communication links with wireless client devices. A wireless client device communicates, via a wireless data communication channel, with a wireless access device (such as an access point or access port device), which in turn communicates with other network components via traditional wired interfaces. Large wireless networks often utilize numerous access devices spread throughout an area, such as a building or campus. In most large wireless networks, these access devices are supported or adopted by a wireless switch. The wireless switch provides centralized network management for the access devices adopted by the wireless switch and supports communications to/from the access devices and other devices, components, or networks.
Most wireless switches are limited in the number of access devices they can adopt or support at one time, either by hardware (e.g., the number of physical ports or processing capability of the switch) or software (e.g., the switch is only licensed for a given number of access devices). In many situations, the wireless switch is oversubscribed, that is, more access devices are connected to the wireless switch than it can support at one time. For example, a wireless network may be designed with a high-density of access devices in an area in order to maintain coverage if one of the access devices fails. While all of these access devices may be physically connected to the wireless switch, not all of the access devices will be adopted by the wireless switch.
A failure at the wireless switch (e.g., loss of power or software error) generally causes the wireless switch to reset or otherwise return to a state where no access devices are adopted. This causes data transfer from the previously adopted access devices to be temporarily interrupted. When the wireless switch comes back online, each access device connected to the wireless switch generally sends an adoption request to the wireless switch. It is desirable that the previously adopted access devices which were transferring data be adopted again by the wireless switch to allow data transfer to resume and minimize any impact on the end user. However, most wireless switches grant adoption requests from access devices in an ad-hoc basis, and there is no way to control or predict which access devices will be adopted by the wireless switch. Thus, when an oversubscribed wireless switch resumes operation, a number of previously inactive access devices could be adopted, while previously adopted access devices that were actively transmitting data may be denied adoption because the wireless switch has reached its limit of adopted access devices it is capable of supporting.